Why is no one talking about the Gitmo torture/suicides? Read Scott Horton’s piece here.
Anthony Hopkins, painter. I like his work.
Silliness. So if Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the country, and Massachusetts is full of woman haters who will never elect a female to statewide office, then it must follow that….
Haiti earthquake survivor credits iPhone ap for saving his life.
Great piece from my colleague Jesse Walker on the 1970s trucker rebellion against the regulatory state.
The late night talk show wars, helpfully explained through Chinese CGI animation.
The New York Times discovers why there’s no good American research supporting medical marijuana: Because the government won’t allow it.
San Diego mayor comes around on gay marriage . . . after his daughter comes out of the closet.
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on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 9:22 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Well then, how the fuck did Martha Coakley get to be Attorney General if Massachusetts is so misogynist? I’ve never even heard the word misogynist used in the same sentence with liberal.
MA is a mix. Extreme racism with union collectivism with academic elitist wannabes and some other crap (and some great fishing). But, people who dance about explaining MA politics see what they want to see and NEVER give credit that maybe people are getting skeptical about huge government. Personally I think The One Party just learned to boil us frogs a bit more slowly next time.
The animation was a riot! Conan as Hulk. Beautiful.
Yeah, yeah, it sucks that the federal government won’t let people use or conduct research on marijuana, but when you consider the government and your government-regulated insurance companies dictate every aspect of your health care, it’s not exactly like their controls on marijuana are really an anomaly in an otherwise freedom-loving agenda.
I can’t choose to take practically any medication without the approval of government and my doctor. My wanting to take it (and accept the risks) basically counts for nothing. My doctor writes me a prescription for a 90-day supply of a drug, but my insurance tells me I can only get it in 30-day installments. I now have to submit reports to the DEA explaining why I need about half the common chemicals I use in my darkroom. I can’t even get medication for my dog’s arthritis and seizures without the permission of the government (and my vet charges a “prescription fee” that even doctors don’t require). If I want to get cold medicine, I have to go beg my pharmacist for it and if I want two packs of 10 instead of one pack of 20, they look at me like I must be trying to get away with something (“Excuse me while I check to see if that’s ok”).
So, forgive me for not being excited by the prospect that the government might maybe possibly someday relax their opposition to medical marijuana, but the fact is that we will always sitting out in the cold blowing rain, hoping upon hope that the masters in the big warm house will throw us a scrap of meat, after which we will excitedly wag our tail and lick their hand and be grateful for that single moment of respite from the fact that we control not a single fucking aspect of our lives anymore.
The San Diego mayor is the problem with America these days. People have an inability to put themselves in the shoes of others. They can’t support something unless they are directly affected by it.
Same is true with Cop abuses and para-military tactics. People don’t care about that stuff because they figure “it’ll never happen to me. I’m a law abiding citizen. It only happens to people that deserve it.”
The San Diego mayor is the problem with America these days.
The Mayor is the problem
The flagpole is the solution
We hung the first one
We can hang another
Yep. Your real enemy isn’t government. It’s your next door neightbor who is perfectly willing to have government outlaw anything that doesn’t personally affect him. When you consider that most human activities are shared by a minority relative to the entire population, it’s no wonder that the government can easily get a “popular mandate” for just about anything they want to do.
Who ever cooked up the concept of democracy and sold it as freedom was a genius.
Dave,
…an evil genius.
Uh, Breaker One-Nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck
You got a copy on me Pig-Pen? C’mon
Uh, yeah 10-4 Pig Pen, fer sure, fer sure
By golly it’s clean clear to Flag-Town, C’mon
Uh, yeah, that’s a big 10-4 Pig-Pen,
Yeah, we definitely got us the front door good buddy,
Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy
Radley asks why no one is talking about the murder of the inmates at Guantanamo. After reading the Scott Horton article I have a different question; Why is Rear Admiral Harry Harris not currently in lock up awaiting a court-martial?
From the article; “The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths ‘suicides.’ In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. ‘I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.’”
This is a unique brand of scumbag.
My favorite line the NYT MJ article:
“Some doctors and law enforcement officials say such anecdotes should not drive public policy.”
Never mind that lawmakers have been legislating by anecdote for years. Fucking hypocrites.
The entire gay marriage issue is yet another example of why democracy is crap. People always talk about “getting to have a say”, but why the fuck should they be allowed to have a say in things that don’t affect them?
Fuck the will of the people. There are some things you’re just not ethically empowered to vote on.
Re the Mass election:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2008 (do I need URL tags?)
Hillary won Massachusetts.
Well, Brown does appear to be a whore…
Ooof that Sadly No post is depressing.
And I love how the national media completely glossed over Coakley’s record as a prosecutor as it related to her Senate campaign. She lost because she’s a monster, and thankfully the people of MA realized that a half-baked health reform bill isn’t worth putting a monster in office.
Sadly, it was close.
I just spent 10 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back reading the comments on that Sadlyno piece of crap. I knew better, really, but I’ll blame it on the baby-teething-related lack of sleep this week.
The thing that scares me is that is that everyone knows that the Republican nuts are crazy. But the Democrat nuts seem to get this weird free pass for their “idealism” when really they’re just… completely fucking insane.
I also apparently proved how tired I really am by commenting on the wrong post. Oops.
Is that supposed to be Jeff Zucker as Captain America? Because honestly, I think making him the Red Skull would be far more appropriate in this case.
“And I love how the national media completely glossed over Coakley’s record as a prosecutor as it related to her Senate campaign. She lost because she’s a monster, and thankfully the people of MA realized that a half-baked health reform bill isn’t worth putting a monster in office.”
In the end that is why even though I’ve been voting straight ticket Democrat since I turned 18, I voted for Joe Kennedy on Tuesday. Coakley’s conduct as AG makes her unfit for public office or polite society, yet so many people were ingnorant of her record. I got in an argument, and damn near popped a vein in my forhead, with someone who said they were voting for COakley because of “civil liberties”. The assumption that anyone with a D next to their name was by default good on that issue. It made me long for a way to smack someone through their monitor.
To its credit, the local press did give mention to her less than savory prosecutorial past.
12-
‘Fuck the will of the people. There are some things you’re just not ethically empowered to vote on.’
very well said!
I was at Gitmo for a few weeks during the time the three detainees died. I feel compelled to point out that I was their for reasons totally unrelated to the detainees; had no contact with them, their guards or the commanders overseeing the detention facility.
While sharing a few beers with some of the military and civilian lawyers at the base bowling alley (not a lot in the way of recreation there) they said that the deaths were, in fact, due to suicides and that the act had been encouraged by their defense attorneys in order to garner attention and sympathy for their cause. It should be noted (and I’m insinuating nothing here… I just think it’s an important detail) that the deaths occurred just a week or so prior to Nightline doing its broadcast from Gitmo.
I don’t really have an opinion either way on the cause of their deaths. The lawyer-folk I spoke with (even the military ones) were generally very unhappy with the entire arrangement and were pretty insistent that Gitmo should be a euphemism for “colossal fuck up”. And my experience there convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt just how torqued our federal agencies are. Notably: there’s a dock/harbor in the bay that offers rental boats and fishing spots for the people stationed there. Nothing fancy; a few johnny boats, some pontoon boats, etc. Stuff you’d typically see at any military facility with aquatic recreational facilities. But with the presence of the FBI, ICE, CIA, et al. you’ll see some astonishingly expensive fishing boats and a few cabin cruisers. All items seized by said agencies and apparently sent to Cuba to provide recreational opportunities for federal employees.
#7, democracy=mob rule. democracy=bad.
Everyone: Dave is right, your enemy is your neighbors. Government is run by other humans and enforced by other humans at every stage (cop, citation, paper processing, various hands stamping your court summons, judge). Get your neighbors to care about liberty, talk to them and fight through the “to hell with them” to get them to do “shoe other foot”. No matter how much someone thinks a law won’t affect them, they are dead wrong because it is further empowering government to control behaviors, which encourages it, which affect EVERYONE.
And shun your neighbors and relatives that are government workers of any stripe. Sometimes an effective tactic is to treat them like a social pariah. They are then likely to band together, and they will only hear what their own thoughts echo. Then maybe someone can infiltrate their network and spread some different thinking like a virus; use the Cass Sunstein method.
#7, democracy=mob rule. democracy=bad.
Everyone: Dave is right, your enemy is your neighbors. Government is run by other humans and enforced by other humans at every stage (cop, citation, paper processing, various hands stamping your court summons, judge). Get your neighbors to care about liberty, talk to them and fight through the “to hell with them” to get them to do “shoe other foot”. No matter how much someone thinks a law won’t affect them, they are dead wrong because it is further empowering government to control behaviors, which encourages it, which affect EVERYONE.
And shun your neighbors and relatives that are government workers of any stripe. Sometimes an effective tactic is to treat them like a social pariah. They are then likely to band together, and they will only hear what their own thoughts echo. Then maybe someone can infiltrate their network and spread some different thinking like a virus; use the Cass Sunstein method.
Radley,
I lived in San Diego for 15 years, Bill R. completely did a 180 back before the special election against Donna F and the prop 8 thing. This should NOT be “this just in” kinda news — it’s OLD news.
For those who like to claim that ‘democracy’ equals ‘liberty’, I like to point out that a lynch mob is a democracy in which the majority has decided that the minority is disposable.
Everybody is looking for reasons why Coakley was defeated. MA voters are misogynist, it’s a vote of no confidence for the Obama administration, discrimination against people with more than one vowel in their last name. Can’t anybody cop to the idea that the candidate herself was morally reprehensible! Most people don’t vote for ideas, they vote for or against people, personalities. Oh, there are the ones, probably a majority, who always vote Democrat or Republican, but the swing votes are swayed by perceived character. This vote wasn’t a “mandate to Washington”. It was a collective expression of the opinion that Scott Brown was a better person than Martha Coakley. Of course, the electorate has traditionally been a horrible judge of character, but in this case, they’re right. Brown may not be a great man but Coakley is a POS!
Jesse Walkers story is great! I’ve been driving for 15 years now. To be an owner/operator these days isn’t any easier than then. It takes lots of money,and the restrictions placed on our industry is still pretty crappy. nothing beats the road though. I have also had a great marriage and raised 2 boys with no problems with a great home life. It just takes balance and a warped sense of humor!
CIII
Exceptionally well said.
@Dave. Oh the human doctor charges you the prescription fee as well, it’s just you don’t get a truly itemized list at the human doctor like you do at the animal doctor.
Hats off to #4, Dave Krueger.
Great post, professionally done. If Gary Johnson gave a speech like that with regards to how the government treats its pain doctors and how it conducts its drug war, he would get a standing ovation.
Why is the US MSM ignoring the story?
There are two possibilities:
a. They have strong reasons to believe it’s bullshit. (But then, we should see stories out soon showing why it’s bullshit.)
b. They have strong reasons not to talk about it. (In that case, we won’t see it covered in the future, either. Rather like the pre-emptive arrests of protesters and their lawyers (and people filming the cops doing the raids, and journalists asking too many questions) at the RNC convention.)
The nice thing about this is that we have alternative predictions here. This is a serious accusation on a big story. If it’s really bullshit, there’s a good story in explaining why it’s bullshit (given the available facts), and what really happened. So if no such story appears, we know that the story is being buried for reasons having nothing to do with newsworthiness.